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0 pointsfreeopinion1y ago0 comments

I bristle a little bit at the characterization of "antivax, sovereign citizen, fear of radio frequencies, or extreme religion" as intellectual abuse.

But I seem to have the same opinion as you do about homeschooling. I am biased by a small sample size of people I know who have homeschooled. Too many of them did so because it was too hard to get their kids up, fed, dressed, and on the bus each morning. Or because one of the public school teachers voted for a particular politician. I have seen very few parents who I felt were competent to teach any subject at a high school level. I have seen a few homeschoolers who wisely depend on co-ops with subject experts. But mostly I have seen what I consider to be failures.

To be fair, the failures I have seen in homeschool are not particularly worse than the failures I have seen in public school. I can't say if the two realities would be different if they swapped. It's just that I have seen great successes in public school and not so much from homeschools.

My own children have been successful in public school. To achieve the same level of success in homeschool would have taken a personal effort from their parents that I am skeptical would have occurred. As it is, they got two bright, well-educated parents to help them understand what the public schools were teaching and to explain dissenting opinions about antivaxing, radio frequencies, extreme religion, etc. :-) In my experience, public school education with active, involved parents is better than active, involved parents alone. At least in the schools my children attended. I admit ignorance to all but a handful of pretty decent public schools. But it is awesome that my children can spend five hours a week learning propaganda about Jefferson and Marx and then I can spend another three hours over dinners to add in John Locke and our local city council. And I lack the structure of the curriculum the school provides. So we can critique and disagree and agree and reinforce and still move through a complete semester of topics because we aren't depending on me to provide the framework and the 95% of things we actually agree on. It's ok if we rabbit hole a bit because the professional teacher will change the subject tomorrow and keep things moving.

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throw463651y ago

> I bristle a little bit at the characterization of "antivax, sovereign citizen, fear of radio frequencies, or extreme religion" as intellectual abuse.

Oh, bristle away! I accept I am being contentious. But I grew up with several friends (even at a mainstream school) whose parents were in these categories (not so much fear of RF, that’s newer).

Some of this stuff takes a hell of a lot of unpicking in later life; I know two adults who grew up in a common-enough minority religion who consider what they were taught to think to be profoundly damaging to their long-term intellectual, social and mental wellbeing.

To pick up on one thing to agree with: I think it’s enormously important for children to have exposure to professional teachers. To people who know how teaching works, how to adapt it, how to moderate and meta-moderate learning.

rayiner1y ago

> Some of this stuff takes a hell of a lot of unpicking in later life; I know two adults who grew up in a common-enough minority religion who consider what they were taught to think to be profoundly damaging to their long-term intellectual, social and mental wellbeing.

But how do they function as a member of society? Are they hard workers? Polite? Clean up after themselves? Can you trust them not to steal something you left unsecured?

JackMorgan1y ago

Many people don't need religion and the fear of eternal punishment to show up for work and not steal things.

Also considering how much wages have not kept up with inflation, as the rich owners take more and more, perhaps we need workers who are less polite and more confrontational.

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